True Love Story!!!!

This is a true story. This story does not contain hugs, kisses, gazing into each others eyes, no electrifying touches and definitely no sex.




My grandfather is 91 and my grandmother is 79. They live in our ancestral home at Parhur Pada in Alibaug. Its about 65 kn or 3 hrs drive from Thane by the State Transport. They stay there all by themselves. My dad visits them once in 15 days. I was never close to my grandparents. I used to visit them once every two years. Needless to say when the whole family used to get together, usually during Ganesh Chahthurti I was the one who used to always feel out of place. I used to die to get back to my life in Thane. The hustle bustle in the city was what I craved for. I could not stand the spells of stone cold silence and the trees around our house. We had a 7 room house made of mud and the flooring of cow dung. As I write this story I can still smell the strange and sweet fragrance of our ancestral home.




My grandparents had 10 children; 4 sons and 6 daughters. As of today, my grandparents have been married for over 79 years. They had an arranged marriage and go married at a very early age. They say marriages are made in heaven but the continuity has to be maintained on earth. I don’t remember my grandparents ever fighting or raising their voice. May be they had their differences but my grandmother, being the traditional Indian wife, never said anything. She accepted her husband as a mother accepts the child. Just like a mother sacrifices everything she can for her child, my grandmother sacrificed whatever she could for her husband and for her children. After their marriage, my grandmother was pregnant for over 9 years considering that she had 10 children.



I never got used to spending time with them until recently when we built a bungalow just 5 minutes away from our ancestral home which was after each one of my dad’s brothers and sisters got married and settled down elsewhere. After much persuasion my grandparents agreed to live in our house. Our ancestral house was divided equally among the 4 brothers. My dad refused the share.



There was a lot of discussion as to what to do about the ramshackle house. Since it was built with bamboos, mud and dung we decided to sell the house and deposit the money in the bank. The interest on the money could be used by my grandparents. Finally everyone agreed to the solution.




I had a very stereotype image about marriages in India. I used to think of husbands do not love their wives; they just stay in the marriage out of obligation. You don’t get to see romance in villages. There has been no case of divorce in our village for the past 300 years. There is only one way by which marriages end in our village- Death.




Until about 5 years from now the main occupation of the people was agriculture. Mangoes, rice, beans and tondli were the main crops grown in the fields. Modern methods of agriculture were unknown. Every family used to own two oxen, a cow or a buffalo. Ploughing of fields was done using traditional methods. The men in the house used to go to the fields in the morning before day break. The main activity during the morning was collecting the fresh tondli. The plant of Tondli is a creeper. Special structure about 6 feet high locally known as ‘mandav’ was created using bamboos and nylon thread along which the plant grew. When I was a kid I used to go with my father for picking the vegetable.




I had been to my village many times in the recent past. Most of my visits lasted for just over a day or two at the most. I am doing my MBA currently. The month of June brought some showers of rain and some relief from the heat. The scenic beauty of my village is anything but boring. Our village is surrounded by hills on 3 sides. During the rainy season, the greenery is especially a sight to watch out for. Although my village does not boast of monumental beauty, the simplicity of people adds a touch of archaic feel to it. I decided to stay for a few days in the village. I needed to be alone following a tragic confrontation with the girl I knew for few months. I reached my village amidst the rains. The clouds had descended upon the mountains. It was about 8.15 when I reached the bus stop. The trees looked fresh and there was a very peculiar fragrance I decided to walk the 2km stretch from the bus stop to my village. The variation of the standard Indian auto-rickshaw called as ‘Vikram’ is generally used by the villagers for transportation within the village. I decided to walk my way to the house. The tar road is just two lanes. Since the rains were not heavy this year, the road did not have too many pot-holes. Bullock carts are rare now-a –days. As I walked down the road I hummed to the tune of a Marathi song from Milind Ingle’s album ‘Gaarva’. I reached my home after a slow walk for 25 minutes. The walk was a refreshing one. I was looking forward to my stay here.
Nothing eventful happened on the first day apart from the fact that my grandfather was terribly sick. Old age has not been too merciful on him. His legs were swollen and he had whooping cough. I reached home and was greeted by a couple of stray dogs who thought that the house belonged to them. I m shit scared of dogs and had to shoo them away with a bamboo stick. As soon as I entered the house I saw the state it was in. it smelt strange. There was litter all around the house. I greeted my grandfather in the traditional way by joining my hands and touching his feet.



“I want to die.” He said. I looked at him. He did not seem satisfied. Even at 92 there was still something he yearned for. Death does not come easily to those who still care about things. Death comes to those who have stopped expecting. Somehow I felt that there was something he still desired. Something that he could not explain. Something that he feared. And that was keeping him alive. He could not let go of that certain thing. I wondered what more can a person ask for. All his kids were settled comfortably and did not care if he was alive or dead. What was it that still kept him alive, I thought.




Then I realized why. It was the month of May. Little did I know that it was my grandparents’ 78th anniversary? My grandfather, who could not walk or listen or hardly talk, had asked our servant to get flowers for my grandmother. He still remembered the day they were tied in holy matrimony years back. Suddenly I realized that the “Something” that kept him alive was “Love”. Once the function was over, my grandfather summoned all his sons and daughters. I found that he was finding it difficult for him to talk. He finally said something which brought tears to my grandmother’s eyes. He said, “Don’t trouble her after I go. Take care of her.”



~Live to Love. Die for Love. ~